An emotional speech by Demi Moore at the Golden Globes highlighted just how damaging one comment or one person can be when it comes to shaping our career. Here’s why we all need to put down our measuring sticks and stop trying to win the approval of people who don’t matter.
Well, in good news, the first positive thing of 2025 has gone viral – a beautiful speech at the Golden Globes by an actor who has long waited for recognition in her field.
It’s very easy to be cynical and judgy about the Golden Globes – after all, Ricky Gervais made an entire career out of it – because it’s a room full of most fancy rich people and we are at the ‘eat the rich’ stage of this particular stage of societal collapse. (Happy New Year!)
BUT every once in a while, you get to see a moment of authenticity that reminds you that under the layers of glitter, these are people who just want to be told they’re doing a good job. It was that message which shone through when Demi Moore won Best Actress for the body horror movie The Substance, a gory cautionary tale about how our obsession with youth leads us down dark paths.
Demi Moore is 62 – I know, right? If we have no idea what 40 looks like anymore, then what 60 looks like is just out of the gate – and this is the first award she has ever won for her job, which she has been doing for 45 years.
“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress, and at that time, I made that mean that this [award] wasn’t something that I was allowed to have,” she told the crowd.
“That I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I bought in, and I believed that. And that corroded me over time to the point where I thought, a few years ago, that maybe this was it. Maybe I was complete. Maybe… I’d done what I was supposed to do.”
Can you imagine telling Demi Moore in the 80s and 90s that she wasn’t good enough? This was a woman who did Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure, The Juror, GI Jane, Striptease, and St Elmo’s Fire. She WAS the film industry. But as if we need more proof that, well, society just hates women (and particularly doesn’t like successful ones who make a lot of money), then you have it.
We may not have had a film producer hang us out to dry when we were in our 30s but all of us have felt the sharp sting of a comment – sometimes dressed up as advice, sometimes laid bare as an insult – that has stuck in our craw ever since.
I had a particular big boss who, along with his sidekick, made me feel like I was shit at my job for years, always implying that I wasn’t a hard worker. It was only when I had resigned that he sincerely told me that it was good I was moving to a role that would appreciate me – but it was too late.
There are many badges that can damage our psyche but ‘lazy’ is really up there. I said yes to extra jobs and roles along the way, to prove a point – to him? Or the mean voice in my head? Who knows.
When we lost our jobs in 2020 and started Capsule, I took on three different jobs to pay my rent and when my hands started literally seizing from writing too much, I just wore three pairs of gloves to allow them to keep working, rather than stop. If they cramped more, I would hurt them. I would be a lot of things, but I wouldn’t be lazy.
There is nothing more corroding, as Demi put it, than being told you’re not good enough. How many women talk about imposter syndrome, when the reality is sometimes the call is not coming from inside the house. Sometimes it’s coming from a workplace – or friendship, or relationship – where you really are being sniped at. Sometimes all it takes is one shitty comment to slowly burn your house down.
Demi finished her speech with a rallying call: “In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough or pretty enough or skinny enough or successful enough or basically just not enough, I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.’”
I would also say that maybe we use that measuring stick to metaphorically beat people with but maybe that’s because I’m premenstrual. We are in the new year, January, a time when we tend to sharpen our measuring stick (does that work for this metaphor) or at least give ourselves a new measure to aim for. I don’t want to spend 30 years chasing approval from people that don’t matter, to be honest. I think we could all learn to put down our measuring stick. Maybe that’s the attitude we need to take into the new year.
