Yahoo Movies Campaign to ditch heels and low-cut dresses at Berlin Film Festival
Women set to attend the Berlin Film Festival this year are being urged to ditch the heels and low-cut dresses for the red carpet.
A campaign, using the hashtag #NobodysDoll, hopes to draw attention to equality in the movie business.
German actress and screenwriter Anna Brüggemann is behind the campaign, and told The Guardian: “The red carpet is like a throwback to the 1950s.
“Women are expected to squeeze into tight-fitting, low-cut dresses and totter on impossible heels in order to serve the gaze of those who’ll judge whether they are marketable or not.
“It’s time we had different images to look up to, of headstrong, unconventional women.”
Brüggemann has said that she’s been contacted by some who are less enthusiastic, however.
“Some said they were wary of being labelled as awkward by directors and producers, while others resented the idea I was trying to say they are like dolls just because they enjoy dressing up,” she went on.
She says that leather jackets, t-shirts and boots are all suitable attire, but also that anything goes.
“Low-cut gowns as well, if that’s your thing. The main thing is that the actress feels comfortable in it,” she said.
“My campaign is about asking when does a woman become that object that men feel they have the right to take for themselves, to decide everything from how she looks, to how low-cut her outfit is.
“When #MeToo happened, and all these beautiful Hollywood actresses said ‘it’s time for more equal rights and we should all be feminists’, I thought, well, equality begins when we women really stop thinking about our bodies as something we have to improve.”
Dieter Kosslick, director of the Berlinale, which begins today, added: “I can advise every woman who is coming to the Berlinale to wear exactly what she wants. We will certainly not be turning back either women who wear flat shoes, or men in high heels.”
It was reported in 2015 that officials at the Cannes Film Festival had barred the way of a group of women trying to attend a gala screening because they were wearing flat shoes.
The director of the festival Thierry Frémaux later denied that it was running a policy of obligatory heels.
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