When it comes to reality, almost every person wishes they had the life of a celebrity. Fame, fortune, glamour, who wouldn’t want it all. But believe it or not, it actually turns out that most pop-stars are exactly like you and I.

TIME Magazine has been picking a “Person of the Year” since 1927. They pick the person, or in this years case, people, who has had the biggest influence and impact to society in the last 12 months.

In 1977, Ashley Judd, American actress and political activist, was invited to a meeting with Harvey Weinstein, American film producer. Turns out this wasn’t any normal meeting. When Judd arrived, Weinstein began attempting to coerce her into his bed. When she escaped him, she knew she couldn’t keep what he was doing a secret and started spreading the word.

“I started talking about Harvey the minute that it happened,” Judd says in an interview with TIME. “Literally, I exited that hotel room at the Peninsula Hotel in 1997 and came straight downstairs to the lobby, where my dad was waiting for me, because he happened to be in Los Angeles from Kentucky, visiting me on the set. And he could tell by my face—to use his words—that something devastating had happened to me. I told him. I told everyone.”

The #MeToo movement represented all people, mostly women, who spoke up and had a worldwide discussion about sexual harassment.

“This reckoning appears to have sprung up overnight. But it has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries,” Time‘s story says.

“It became a hashtag, a movement, a reckoning,” Felsenthal voiced in an explanation published on Time’s website. “But it began, as great social change nearly always does, with individual acts of courage.”
“These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day, and in the past two months alone, their collective anger has spurred immediate and shocking results: nearly every day, CEOs have been fired, moguls toppled, icons disgraced. In some cases, criminal charges have been brought.”

President Donald Trump was next in line for Person of the Year, this would’ve been his second time winning. Chinese President Xi Jinping came with a close third place.

On Wednesday, 6 November, Edward Felsenthal, Time’s editor-in-chief, announced the winner on NBC’s, Today.

Many people were shocked to find that multiple women had actually won Person of the Year. The women chosen were Ashley Judd, Susan Fowler, Adama Iwu, Taylor Swift and Isabel Pascual. These women, along with hundreds of thousands of others, including men, have all faced sexual harassment.

When Alyssa Milano wrote, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write #metoo as a reply to this tweet”, on twitter. She was not expecting over 32,000 replies in the matter of 24 hours.

Today, #metoo has been used over millions of times in at least 85 countries. This goes to show people everywhere that sexual harassment is NOT a joke and that people facing it, are not alone. Sexual assault MUST come to an end, and people all around the world are coming together to put an end to it.

Alyssa Milano did an amazing thing by bringing all of these women, and men together to justify themselves against their sexual predators. Sexual harassment was not a main focus in today’s world, and now that it is, people are finally sticking up for themselves, and others are understanding that this is a serious problem everywhere.

Women on twitter shared their stories and some told us how they were terrified of going to work every day, knowing they had to see their boss, who was a sexual abuser. They shared how they couldn’t even say anything about it because their bosses threatened to fire them.

“We asked members of our Facebook community to share their personal stories of harassment while they worked in retail and food service. Nearly all of those who responded said that they felt targeted by those who were harassing them because of their gender. The majority said they couldn’t respond or report the harassment because they might lose their jobs,” says Nadya Agrawal.

President Donald Trump has even been accused of being a sexual predator. Women who had supported Trump shared that Trump had little respect for women. “I remember feeling powerless,” says Fowler, the former Uber engineer who called out the company’s toxic culture, “like even the government wasn’t looking out for us.”

No matter what people were saying and doing, sexual harassment just wasn’t being addressed. Nobody was doing anything about it, until four beautiful strong women decided something needed to be done. Something so small such as the #metoo movement on twitter made such a drastic and amazing change in how people viewed sexual harassment.

People were finally starting to realize that sexual harassment is not a little thing happening to a few people, sexual harassment is happening to millions all around the world.