Your Favorite Shonda Rhimes Moment

Earlier this week, Shonda Rhimes received The Hollywood Reporter Sherry Lansing Award, given to her for “in recognition of my breaking through the industry’s glass ceiling as a woman and an African-American.” Here’s part of her speech, published on Medium:

How many women had to hit that glass before the first crack appeared? How many cuts did they get, how many bruises? How hard did they have to hit the ceiling? How many women had to hit that glass to ripple it, to send out a thousand hairline fractures? How many women had to hit that glass before the pressure of their effort caused it to evolve from a thick pane of glass into just a thin sheet of splintered ice?

So that when it was my turn to run, it didn’t even look like a ceiling anymore. I mean, the wind was already whistling through — I could always feel it on my face. And there were all these holes giving me a perfect view to other side. I didn’t even notice the gravity, I think it had worn itself away. So I didn’t have to fight as hard, I had time to study the cracks. I had time to decide where the air felt the rarest, where the wind was the coolest, where the view was the most soaring. I picked my spot in the glass and called it my target. And I ran. And when I hit finally that ceiling, it just exploded into dust.

Like that.
My sisters who went before me had already handled it.

A couple of weeks ago, I was working a red carpet event for a freelance job and one of the questions I had to ask was “What’s your favorite Shonda Rhimes moment?” The answer, from now on, is this one.