Olivia Wilde Asks: "What Will They Think of Us in 75 Years?"
by Olivia Wilde
Faculty, trustees, families, and dear class of 2089, it is my sincere honor to speak to you today. I realize you would like to spend this day focusing on your future, but in order to move forward wisely, we must truly understand where we've come from. So bear with me while I reminisce.
My grandmother Olivia Wilde was born in 1984. She became an actress and was recognized for her work often (mostly by bisexual teenagers), but our family knew her only as Gram-O Hot Pants. It was a romantic time for the cinema, when people still gathered in theaters to watch films, eating buttered corn and sipping sugar water while the lights blazed across the tiny 50-foot screen. It was, however, no easy task to become a successful woman in the movie business back then. Shocking, I know, since today it is difficult to conceive of a time when Hollywood, and even politics, was dominated by men.
Before she died last year in a tragic break-dancing accident, Gram-O—just peaking at age 104—loved to tell stories about life in 2014, the year she decided to start her own family despite the dismal forecast for global survival. It was a time of poverty, ecological crisis, the missionary position, and anal bleaching. A time before scientists realized the poisonous long-term effects of quinoa, and when plastic surgery (the cutting, sucking, and morphing of one's face and body) was still legal and thriving.
America was still young, like a Great Dane puppy that doesn't know its own strength and routinely knocks over small children and houseplants. This was a time, graduates, when the government treated all nonprescribed drugs as dangerous threats to peace and stability. They considered addiction a criminal-justice issue, as opposed to one of health. This resulted in massive portions of the population entering the overcrowded prison system, where they were anything but rehabilitated.
It was a rough era for the planet too, when humans still used plastic materials (even to eat and drink out of!) and discarded waste into the oceans, creating giant islands of trash, one often described as being twice the size of Texas. (Remember, graduates, Texas was still an American state in 2014, before the Rawhide Secession of 2020, led by General Gary Busey.)
Gram-O was adamant that "fast food" (processed food served in bags and consumed mostly in moving vehicles) was sometimes too delicious to resist, but I cannot imagine anything more disgusting and sad. People sacrificed wellness for convenience and then spent billions of dollars on the Medical Industrial Complex, leaving preventive care solely for the wealthiest few.
Although great strides had been made in the Civil Rights Movement in the twentieth century, it wasn't until 2014 that Gram-O began to believe a female American president was actually possible, mostly due to the formidable political presence of women like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. Despite the wealth of evidence proving women's effectiveness in high-level business and political positions, they made up just 18 percent of Congress and held only 4.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions. This explains why the government routinely faced gridlock and occasionally even shut down, leaving thousands of people out of work and without crucial services for weeks on end. Once women held a more equal share of political power, they used their innate skills of mediation and logical reasoning to stop such childish stonewalling.
Despite their major accomplishments, in 2014 white women were paid 77 cents and women of color were paid 64 cents for every dollar earned by a white man, even though more women went to college than their male counterparts. Although laws were passed to prevent it, working women continued to be penalized for being mothers. This persisted until President Blue Ivy Carter's Hormonal Equality Act of 2050, which made it possible for a man to carry a fetus to term. In 2014 women were solely responsible for fertility control, but once men could become pregnant, they campaigned to have contraception added to all alcoholic beverages. With their new understanding of child rearing, male politicians were able to grasp the injustice of the pay gap, which has since been shut tight.
Beyond politics, Gram-O described a disturbing plague of "baby talk" that swept a huge percentage of the female populationin those years. Grown women would force their voices to sound higher and more child-like, presumably to mask their intelligence in order to lure men. They spoke from their noses instead of their guts, as if they had lost touch with their mighty power as women.
It was the era of FOMO (fear of missing out), a time of enormous enthusiasm for computerized socializing, perpetuating a desperate need to update one's every thought and move. The concept of personal privacy had been rejected in favor of obsessive sharing, and then sharing comments about others' sharing. Taking advantage of the public's exhibitionist attitude, the government openly spied on phone and Internet activity.
Once Americans realized they had surrendered all rights to their private lives in the name of national security, a backlash occurred, sparking a massive movement to end the FOMO phenomenon. Instead of reading gossip while driving cars, eating dinner, watching movies, and sitting in class, people actually began to put their phones out of arm's reach. As a result, this country entered a period of mindful peace, as people began sleeping better, dreaming more, and slowly relearning how to have in-person conversations with strangers.
But before this evolution occurred, 2014 marked an odd phase in America, a society in which guns were legal and readily available for anyone who needed to let off steam. Gay Americans were still fighting for equal rights, if you can believe it. The prison business was booming while schools were badly underfunded. It was a time of excess material possessions and food, and of vast economic disparity.
It's hard to believe Gram-O lived in such a bleak period, but she never described it that way. She would admit that, yes, the times were f lawed, but it was also an age of great ingenuity, hope, and progress. Despite the pay gap, women made up half the total workforce, up from one third in 1969. Americans at long last received equal access to health care regardless of their medical histories. Gay marriage was legalized in 16 states, and in all 50 by 2015. They were inching toward the society we have today, and without their fearless determination and optimism, our world would never have started the process of recovery it so desperately needed.
And then there were Gram-O's own contributions. After releasing her full-length hip-hop LP, Speak From da Gut, Ladies, Gram-O went on to invent spinning bikes that would provide power for entire cities when operated simultaneously and feverishly by sweaty SoulCyclers. This, of course, is the technology we now know as Soul Power. Starring in Police Academy XII earned her an honorary badge from the NYPD, which she used to enforce a minimum speed limit for tourists walking in crowded areas. After four seasons as head coach of the New York Knicks, she left the NBA to focus on writing, publishing such literary gems as Don't Be an Asshole—Turn Off Your Brights and Seriously, Don't Get a Tramp Stamp.
On her deathbed Gram-O told me that if she could go back, she would encourage everyone in 2014 to stress less and laugh more, and to stop carrying regrets and insecurities around like packhorses. She would tell every young woman to speak up (deeply), enjoy surpassing expectations, and recognize the extreme power of a supportive sisterhood. She would meet as many strangers as possible and find something in common with each of them, and never forget that we are all part of the same, weird family.
In her best moments, Gram-O was an optimist. She knew our society would evolve, and 75 years later I am glad to say she was right. The women before us built the equal and innovative America we live in now. They made it possible for me to stand before you today, graduates, as the seventh American female president, and tell you with confidence that we are on the right track.
Olivia Wilde is an actress, activist, and writer. She's engaged to actor Jason Sudeikis and pregnant with their first child. Follow her @oliviawilde.
Traduction par Jujualias
Source: glamour.com