Nearly two weeks after President Donald J. Trump
tweeted a tease that he was “probably going to be named” Time magazine’s Person of the Year
for 2017, the venerable magazine broke its silence, naming the “Silence Breakers” its persons of the year.
The cover features some of the leading breakers of the
silence surrounding sexual harassment, women including Ashley Judd, Susan Fowler, Adama Iwu, Taylor Swift and Isabel Pascual, as well as the shoulder of a woman representing legions of anonymous
victims.
Time makes a statement that they have collectively triggered a movement that could well change societal standards forever.
“The galvanizing
actions of the women on our cover… along with those of hundreds of others, and of many men as well, have unleashed one of the highest-velocity shifts in our culture since the 1960s,”
writes the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal. He adds:
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“Social media acted as a powerful accelerant; the hashtag #MeToo has now been used millions of times in at least 85
countries ... The roots of Time’s annual franchise — singling out the person or persons who most influenced the events of the year — lie in the so-called great man theory of
history, a phrasing that sounds particularly anachronistic at this moment.
"But the idea that influential, inspirational individuals shape the world could not be more apt this year…. For
giving voice to open secrets, for moving whisper networks onto social networks, for pushing us all to stop accepting the unacceptable, The Silence Breakers are the 2017 Person of the Year.”