5. Jennifer Lawrence
Who doesn’t love Jennifer Lawrence? She gets starstruck! She pranks interviewers! She loves pizza! She’s also the world’s highest paid actress – raking in a cool $52 million this year – so she’s a lot less girl-next-door than her kooky persona would suggest. JLaw admits that she hasn’t been all that vocal about feminism in the past, but the 2014 Sony Hack revelations soon put an end to this, motivating her to take up her pen and publish the essay, Why do I get paid less than my male co-stars? in Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter. In her article, Lawrence recognises that her problems with her exorbitant movie pay cheques are “not exactly relatable,” and fears that failure to negotiate higher sums for her work “could… be a lingering habit of trying to express our opinions in a certain way that doesn’t ‘offend’ or ‘scare’ men.” Her piece helped fuel the wage gap debate and was lauded by big industry names including Bradley Cooper, Emma Watson, Jessica Chastain and Carey Mulligan. It was even picked up by Hillary Clinton who blasted out a congratulatory “Brava, Jennifer” on Twitter. Lawrence may play Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games franchise but, as a woman, the odds are never in her favour (you sniggered, I know you did).
4. Viola Davis
Film and television voters, be they Emmy or SAG, are notoriously slow to reward anyone who ‘doesn’t fit the mould.’ Case in point: the first black woman to win an Oscar was Gone with the Wind’s Hattie McDaniel in 1939, the second was Whoopi Goldberg in 1991. Viola Davis made TV history in September as the first African-American to be awarded the Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama. Tearfully clinging to her statuette, the How to Get Away With Murder star thanked the Taraji P. Hensons and the Kerry Washingtons of the industry for bringing much-needed diversity to our screens, reminding her audience “the only thing that separates women of colour from anyone else is opportunity.”
3. Amy Poehler
Amy Poehler has gone from strength to strength this year. She’s bid a fond farewell to Parks and Recreation’s feminist protagonist Leslie Knope in the sitcom’s final season and has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls – an organisation that helps women be “their authentic selves” – was back with a vengeance on the red carpet over Awards Season where the hashtag #AskHerMore ensured female stars were asked more thought-provoking questions than “Who are you wearing?”
She also continued smashing the patriarchy alongside her bosom buddy, Tina Fey. The Sisters actresses criticised Hollywood sexism as Golden Globes hosts, condemning the dearth of roles for women over forty and comically belittling George Clooney’s scant achievements by comparing them with those of his human rights lawyer wife. The pair later returned to Saturday Night Live – in what was to become the second most watched episode of the series – where they reprised their roles as Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. All goodhearted fun until the duo played out a sketch the Internet wasn’t too happy about, with newspapers calling it both “too real” and “too far.” Which sketch am I referring to, you may ask? Only Meet your second wife, the game show where happily married men meet the obscenely young girls they will eventually wed after their midlife crises. It was shocking. It was hilarious. It was oh so Poehler-Fey.
2. Lena Dunham
What I love most about Lena Dunham is her candidness; she’s unafraid to share personal truths through her electric social media accounts, her critically acclaimed TV show or her best-selling memoir. As an artist, Dunham is renowned for her refreshing honesty to such an extent that her name is almost inextricable from the word ‘exposure.’ Think about the sheer number of scenes the Girls foursome is filmed on the toilet (with or without an audience) and you’ll catch my drift. 2015 has marked a change for Lena, as her new projects have supplemented her internal musings with external analysis.
Her Lenny Letter, for example, which she founded with producer Jenni Konner, has been dropping into my inbox twice a week since September. This email newsletter treats feminism, style, health, politics and more in an engaging, approachable manner. Its first issues – whose stories were frequently picked up by other media outlets – have included interviews with Hillary Clinton, advice from Planned Parenthood and comments from Jenny Slate on her first vajacial (I bet she wishes I’d made that one up…). Lenny is so much more thoughtful than those body-shaming women’s magazines leaking from newsstands today. Lena also started her Women of the Hour podcast this autumn, which, much like the newsletter, discusses millennial feminist hot topics with guest speakers Emma Stone, Zadie Smith, Jemima Kirke, Emily Ratajkowski etc. etc.
1. Amy Schumer
Comedian Amy Schumer, who has been working the circuit for 11 years, really made it big in 2015. She outed the Kardashians as terrible role models when hosting SNL, she landed a $9 million book deal that far outshone Tina Fey’s Bossypants, and her “beautiful, gross, strong, thin, fat, skinny, ugly” topless shot in the Pirelli Calendar had almost 500,000 people double-tapping their approval on Instagram. The girl’s got it going on. You probably saw her Hollywood debut in summer blockbuster Trainwreck – scripted by Schumer – where she plays Amy, a fictionalised version of herself, who embarks upon a whirlwind romance with a sports doctor.
Schumer had to defend her character at press junkets because, for some reason, interviewers thought it was okay to call her ‘skanky’ to her face. Eye roll. As has become her custom, the comedian slammed unjust gender standards in her HBO Live Special. She thinks it’s unfair that journalists have labelled her a ‘sex comic,’ pointing out “a guy could get up here and pull his dick out and people would be like ‘he’s a thinker’”. It shouldn’t be the case that Amy is “made to feel disgusting and weird as a girl who loves sex”. In the world of television, the performer picked up her first Emmy for Inside Amy Schumer, a sketch show whose skits routinely mock the status quo’s ingrained sexism. To cite just a few examples: the 12 Angry Men parody where a jury debates whether or not Schumer is hot enough to be on TV, the pop video Girl You Don’t Need Make-Up and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ celebration of her “last fuckable day” as an actress. It’s a hoot, I’d recommend checking it out on YouTube. I’m greatly looking forward to seeing what she’ll get up to at the Golden Globes, where she’s been nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy. Will she jokingly fall at Kanye West’s feet again? Time will tell!
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