On Monday morning, Time released the shortlist for the magazine’s 2017 “Person of the Year.” Among this year’s finalists, which include Colin Kaepernick, Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, Kim Jong Un and yes, unfortunately President Trump, is one we didn’t see coming: #MeToo.
As the Huffington Post reports, #MeToo, or rather, the thousands of women who took part in the social media movement that revealed just how horrifyingly common sexual assault is, could be Time‘s 2017 “Person of the Year.” In its announcement of this year’s nominee’s, the magazine said the movement had “fueled a moment of reckoning about the treatment of women in the workplace.”
.@TIME releases its Person of the Year finalists. pic.twitter.com/jNxkKyGwhM
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 4, 2017
Time writes that its annual “Person of the Year” award goes to, “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse.”
#MeToo’s chances of winning are looking good, too — while Time stresses that the winners of its reader’s choice poll for the award don’t necessarily become the official winner selected by its editors, #MeToo, took only second place to Saudi Arabia crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, who earlier this year, played a major part in lifting restrictions that prevented Saudi women from legally driving.
Considering German Chancellor Angela Merkel was only the fourth woman to ever receive the award in the 90 years that Time has given it, recognizing the thousands of women that came forward with their stories as part of the #MeToo movement would be a *huge* deal. Especially when, you know, one of the other options has been caught on tape admitting to sexually assaulting women and “grabbing them by the pussy.”
Stay tuned — Time is announcing the 2017 “Person of the Year” on Wednesday.