Patricia Arquette won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a single mother in Boyhood. But also, she won the whole Oscars with FEMINISM.
Flawless.
After thanking the usual suspects (children, director, et al), she ended her speech on this rousing call to action:
"To every woman who gave birth to every tax payer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else's equal rights. It's our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America."
Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez were all YAAASS, QUEEN.
Arquette elaborated on her speech in the Oscars press room.
"We don't have equal rights for women in America and we don't because the people who wrote the Constitution, it wasn't intended for women," she said. "The truth is, even if it sort of feels as if there are equal rights in America, right under the surface there are huge issues that are at play that really do affect women."
The call for wage equality is particularly resonant in Hollywood now.
It was revealed in December that Jennifer Lawrence, star of the massively successful Hunger Games franchise, made less than her male co-stars in American Hustle. When asked about this fact, which was exposed in a leaked email from the Sony hack, Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal shifted the responsibility to the women themselves, saying earlier this month, "Women shouldn't work for less money. They should know what they're worth."
In the Oscars press room, Arquette did not agree. "I think we federal laws that are comprehensive," she said when asked about Pascal's comment. "We need to pass a constitutional admentment in the United States of America, so we can pass the ERA once and for all."
(A version of the Equal Rights Amendment, which would ensure gender equality under the Constitution, first came before Congress in 1923. Gender equality is still not guaranteed by the Constitution.)
Scott Bryan contributed to this post.