Is the Red Carpet Sexist? 74% of Women Say No

Beyonce on the red carpet at the 2014 Met Gala. Photo: Getty Images

#AskHerMore? The average red carpet watcher says yes please—but not for the reasons you might think. Yahoo recently conducted a survey of over 1,000 people to gauge public perception on how the media handles the red carpet and the results may surprise you.

For those of you who don’t know, the #askhermore campaign, launched in late 2014 by the Representation Project, tackles gender bias on the red carpet and encourages media to go beyond appearances and ask actresses about their accomplishments and future projects. The campaign has been endorsed by Hollywood bigwigs like Reese Witherspoon, Amy Poehler and Connie Britton, and the hashtag has reached over 4 million people, according to social media tracker Keyhole. All this noise has had a measurable impact: Earlier this year, E! Online pulled its much-ridiculed mani cam—those strange boxes in which actresses are invited to parade their fingers on a catwalk—and at the recent 2015 Emmys Ryan Seacrest made an effort to ask more than the standard, “who are you wearing?”

Despite all this, our survey, which polled 1012 people who have watched a red carpet event pre-awards show this year, found that the majority of viewers are ambivalent—at best—about the movement. Sixty eight percent of respondents said they felt men and women are already treated with equal respect on the red carpet, a sentiment that was, surprisingly, strongest among women: 74% of the total female audience did not see an unfair gender bias on the red carpet. Over half of respondents (54%) don’t think there’s a difference in the substance of questions asked of male and female celebrities and only 14% of respondents found the fact that women get asked more questions about style and fashion than men to be sexist (just 7% called it demeaning).

These results might not render the #askhermore campaign irrelevant, but they do indicate that the movement has yet to pick up steam. The vast majority (74%) of red carpet watchers had never even heard of it and female viewers were significantly less aware of it; a whopping 80% of female respondents said they’d never heard of it compared to 69% of men. Millennials, perhaps unsurprisingly, were the group most aware of the campaign, which took root on social media.

So what kind of change do viewers want to see? Fifty three percent think questions could be “fine tuned so there’s a little more substance” while 28% think the types of questions asked need a complete overhaul—and not because of feminism. Simply put, most viewers find questions about fashion boring. The topic ranks lowest in terms of questions viewers want asked of male and female celebrities, and highest as questions they’re not interested in, regardless of gender. Instead, red carpet watchers were overwhelmingly more interested in hearing about a celebrity’s current or future projects, career aspirations and point of view on the industry. While nearly half (47%) of respondents said they still wanted to hear “who” female celebrities were wearing (compared to 17% who wanted the same questions asked of male celebrities) they were clear that fashion and style questions shouldn’t be the only focus. The majority (43%) said they think “it’s fine [that women get asked about their outfit] as long as they get asked other, more serious questions.”

This is in line with the brand of feminism sweeping through pop culture, one that embraces gender equality as well as fashion. In a world where Beyonce’s lauded for being both a feminist icon and a fashion one, of course viewers still want to know what their favorite star is wearing—it’s just not the only thing they want to hear about. Accordingly, 28% of respondents said they thought questions about female celebrities fashion choices were “fun,” and 20% said they loved hearing about the subject. Nowhere was the division more apparent than among Millennials: The group was most likely to find such questions both fun (35%) and offensive (38%). Everyone, however, was united on one front: The mani cam is just plain silly. While very few found it actually offensive (11% said it was demeaning, 8% said it was sexist), the majority of respondents (53%) thought it ridiculous. Thank god.

While the survey might suggest that most viewers don’t find the red carpet sexist or offensive, it appears they do find it quite boring. All the more reason to #askhermore—and keep taking fashion risks.

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