Shook, is how I felt Wednesday morning when I woke up and saw a friend’s snapchat that Matt Lauer had been fired from The Today show. I had watched him and Savannah Guthrie a few days prior live from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I was now watching a YouTube video of Guthrie announcing his termination. I watched Lauer next to Savannah Guthrie, Ann Curry, Meredith Vieira, and Katie Couric throughout my childhood. He was an icon.
In the third grade it was my job to set the table for breakfast and stir the eggs. As my Mom tried to get my siblings down the stairs, it was just Matt and I as I watched him on the small TV on the kitchen counter.
He told me about the war in Iraq, Brittany Spears shaving her head, Hurricane Katrina, and a young senator from Illinois. Throughout my life Lauer was consistent. As my mother’s kitchens and tv’s changed, his co-workers and stories changed. But, he was still there doing his job, just as I was still doing mine.
Matt Lauer was my first connection to the outside world. He was not talking to me as a third grader stirring the eggs scared of doing long division; he was talking to me, an informed citizen about children in shelters, and the women unable to vote.
This man, who had given me perspective through asking tough questions, was asking women tough questions in his office behind a locked door. Just like so many despicable men he was taking advantage of his power and status to take advantage of women.
Except, this was not a Hollywood executive or an old man wondering around the halls of Congress. This is Matt Lauer, a man whose face and words has informed millions for over twenty years. Now, we face the fact that his words and his actions have haunted women for over twenty years.
I do not know where we go from here. I do not know if it is the fact we grew up with our role models being asked who they were wearing, or being asked to comment on pictures of themselves and not the work they were doing, the stories they were trying to tell led up to this. I do not know when it will become acceptable for no to mean no.
Just as I was learning long division, I was learning that if a girl ‘played hard to get’, the boy should go after her. I had watched Princess Lea give in and kiss Han Solo after she said that she hated him and he forcible pressed her up against a wall. I grew up thinking that was acceptable, a form of entertainment. A narrative dominating romantic comedies and action movies. So of course, actresses would be asked about clothes their bodies were wearing and not the women they were playing for their job.
What plagues us most about this is wondering if it could have been prevented.
With Lauer’s question to Ann Hathaway, his relationship with Ann Curry, the location of his office at the end of a Hallway, away from other offices; should we have known what was going on behind closed doors? We saw one side of Matt Lauer, while many women saw a different side.
What we are now finding is, the behavior we once accepted as normal, we are now seeing as signs of harassment. What was once acceptable is no longer tolerated. Us, the viewers have perspective.
Matt Lauer was dethroned last week. The man who gave us perspective on the world is giving us perspective on how harassment effects every one of us. It is sad. But, as women continue to come forward and our phone screens update us with allegations, we now know better. We know better to assume the stereotype of creepy old men taking advantage of their younger, less experienced colleagues. The termination of Matt Lauer hits close to home, reminding me of the old TV in my mom’s kitchen. It makes us ask ourselves if we are friends with anyone who treats women this way. Just as Lauer has no words to express his sorrow, we have no where to go but up.